Information Systems will be implementing an enhanced Virtual Private Network (VPN) system during the fall break (Mon-Tue, 10/25-26/2004). We will actually begin the work on Friday, 10/22. This work primarily involves the EMU Internet connection. While the work is being done there will be periods of time that the EMU Internet connection will not be available. This is likely to involve several hours of downtime for the Internet connection. To the best of our knowledge the outages will only involve the EMU Internet connection.

When the EMU Internet connection is "down" the following systems are affected:

1. Web Browsing: Users will not be able to reach any off-campus web servers. The on-campus servers such as www.emu.edu, webmail.emu.edu, blackboard.emu.edu, campusweb.emu.edu and calendar.emu.edu will still be available to on-campus users.
2. Email: Email messages going to and coming from the Internet will be temporarily unavailable. However, no messages will be lost because all will be held in "queues" until the Internet connection is restored.
3. Off-Campus Users: Students and employees who are away from campus and attempt to connect to on-campus resources such as email/webmail, Blackboard, CampusWeb and the EMU web server will be unable to do so.
4. Lancaster Users: Persons at the Lancaster campus who use the WinTerm/Terminal Server system (which is all employees) will not have access to the Terminal Server. They will not be able to use their WinTerms. The only computers that will operate are the standalone student computers and the classroom teacher station computers (however no computer will be able to connect to any computing resources at the Harrisonburg campus).

We will do everything possible to minimize the EMU Internet connection downtime but we cannot accurately determine how much of an outage will occur on 10/22,25,26. Any outages that occur on Friday, 10/22, will be as late as possible in the afternoon. The Critical Information Alert system will be used to keep on-campus users informed of the status of the Internet connection while the work is being performed.